RESOURCES

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Since I moved to Berkeley from DC a year ago, nothing has made me feel more horribly out of place than Café Gratitude.

Cafe Gratitudé is a small, popular Bay Area chain with two restaurants in San Fran, one in Berkeley, and one in San Rafael. According to their website, Café Gratitude is both "a school in transformation" and "an experiment in sacred commerce."

Are you getting the picture yet? It's the ultimate hippie lifestyle eatery. To their credit, they serve high-quality organic food that they try to source from local farmers and most people seem to love it. Unfortunately, I can't speak to the quality of the food as I've never set foot in the place. Why? Because the way in which one is forced to order at Café Gratitude makes me want to run (screaming) back to DC as fast as I can.

Allow me to explain in case you are not familiar with Café Gratitude's shtick. Each dish has a name that expresses a unique (and beautiful) state of being. Here are a few examples from their current menu:

You MUST order by saying "I am eternally blessed" - you cannot say "I'll have the I am eternally blessed" or "an eternally blessed, please" because the wait staff will not place your order. Seriously.

Since I prefer to keep my daily affirmations to myself, the thought of having to say "I am praising" out loud in public makes me want to throw up. So you can probably understand why Café Gratitude has been a painful reminder that I may never fit in here in Berkeley.

But then, out of my angst, a brilliant idea* was born -- Café Attitude - the alternative for all of us East coast transplants who don't want to explore devotional chanting or deepen our yoga practices.**

Café Attitude would serve meat (lots of it), as well as dairy, and wheat, the wait staff would dress in black and be pale as ghosts (NO healthy California glow here), and all talk of yoga and meditation would be banned on the premises.

But, of course, the thing that would have all us angsty East coast types flocking to the place would be the menu. Instead of forcing diners to pretend that they live in a wonderland of bliss, peace, and wonderment, Café Attitude would give people a chance to express themselves honestly. For example, the menu would feature the following fine fare:

"I am eternally pissed off" (a big plate of penne a l'arabiatta)

"I am suicidal" (a Bloody Mary)

"I am exhausted" (a huge mocha latte)

"I am premenstrual" (a thick slice of German chocolate cake)

There are a bunch of other states of being I'd like to include on the menu but I could use some help matching them up with the appropriate cuisine, including the "I am bloated", "I am angsty", "I am bored out of my mind", "I am unmotivated", "I am cranky", "I am litigious", "I am obese", "I am insecure", "I am borderline", and "I am eternally directionless."

Any ideas for which foods would best match these perfectly valid states of being are welcome, as well as any new menu suggestions.

*To give credit where credit is due, Café Attitude was the brainchild of my big brother, a hippie who loves Café Gratitude but who is still able to see the humor in the whole situation.**No offense to those of you who are into this stuff (especially Kara, Daniel, Louis and Julie.) I think it's great, it's just not my thing.

Berkeley is the land of farmers' markets. There are three held in the city each week at different locations. Saturday is the downtown market at Center Street. It's truly a feast for the eyes and a foodie's delight. However, it's not cheap so you may want to use that tried and true gambling addict's method and bring only as much money as you can afford to spend with you to avoid blowing your wad.This sign greets you at the beginning of the block, along with a box of used plastic bags you can grab to help cut down on waste.

Much (if not most) of the produce at the market is certified organic. Below is a picture of the prettiest mesclun mix I've ever seen.

Thankfully, fall means apples on this coast, too. Tons of varieties from the local orchards.

Peppers come in all colors...

Grapes appeared at the market towards the end of the summer. I think the season may be ending soon but they're still delicious.

Dry-farmed organic Early Girl tomatoes.Either the Early Girls keep producing late or they're actually a second summer planting.

The Fatted Calf Charcuterie's charmingly packaged beef jerky. According to one of the guys who works at the stand, the NY Times declared it "the third best jerky in the U.S." At $30 a pop, it'd better be good... They've got a cute web site.

For those who like it hot!

For those who like it caffeinated (I just thought it was a cute sign.)

Friday, September 28, 2007

I am no expert but I have done some reading, made many mistakes, and taken a month of Thai cooking classes with someone who is an expert. Below are a few things I've learned along the way.

1. Stir-frying is a very quick, high-heat cooking method so it's essential to slice and dice the veggies finely as they will only have minutes to cook, at most.

2. Peanut is the best oil to fry with because it has a relatively high flash point (the temperature at which it will begin to burn and smoke) compared with other oils. My brilliant Thai cooking teacher, Kasma, prefers lard over all else, but most people are sort of turned off by that so peanut oil is a good alternative.

3. You must have ALL your ingredients prepared and at the ready when you begin since things get pretty hot and heavy in the kitchen once you start stir-frying and there is no time to be cutting or mixing things.

4. Begin by frying your "aromatics" -- ginger, garlic, chili pepper, etc., in the oil you'll be using to stir-fry for about one minute. This will allow them to infuse the oil with their tastes. I owe this tip (which is probably completely obvious to anyone of Asian descent) to Deborah Madison's wonderful cookbook, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

5. Remember the "order of operations" from math class way back when? In order to ensure that everything gets done at the same time, you have to start the things that will take longer to cook (like carrots) before things which will cook more quickly (like snow peas).

6. Don't leave food sitting in the wok as it may get discolored by the metal fairly quickly.

7. Season your wok after each use. It's smoky and kind of a pain but absolutely essential.

If you're looking for inspiration, check out my friend, Grace Young's lovely book, The Breath of a Wok. It's full of delicious recipes and wok-related lore. In fact, one of my favorite dishes (the garlic spinach below) is from this book.

N.B. Unless you are lucky enough to have a really good, high-powered stove (I'm lucky if mine even lights), you probably won't be getting the most out of your wok because they perform best over really high heat and your typical MagicChef burner simply cannot muster a super-hot flame. This does not mean you can't stir-fry with success but it does mean you may need to cook in smaller batches since your wok won't get as hot as it would over a really big flame.You might like:

I've only recently started eating beets - for years I was too turned off by their "earthy" (this is a polite way of saying that they taste like dirt) flavor to stomach them. Then I discovered golden beets - which have a lighter, sweeter taste - and everything changed.The recipe below is a mish-mash of recipes I found online. I've made it a few times and it is delicious and EASY. You can use any kind of beets - golden, purple, chiogga, whatever floats your boat. They're all beautiful and will be equally tasty (though steer clear of the purple ones if you don't like a strong "earthy" flavor.)

Quick Pickled Beets Serves Four; Prep Time 40 minutes

Ingredients

1 bunch of beets (4 or 5 full-sized beets or 8-10 baby beets)

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1 Tbsp sugar

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions1. Remove the greens and wash the beets (don't bother getting too obsessive about cleaning them as you will be peeling the skins off later in the process.)

2. Steam or boil the beets for 30 minutes or until you can easily slip a fork into them.

3. Drain the beets and rinse in cold water. Use your fingers to slip the skins off - this should be very easy (and oddly satisfying) to do. Throw the peels away and slice the beets into whatever bowl you plan to serve them in. The size of the slices is really up to you - whatever you think you'll enjoy eating is fine.

4. Combine the vinegar, sugar, oil and mustard and whisk with a fork. Add salt and pepper to taste.

5. Pour the vinaigrette over the beets and turn to coat. Taste and adjust salt and pepper to taste. Marinate for at least half an hour to allow them to "pickle." You can also refrigerate them overnight to let the flavor soak in more.

This excellent recipe hails from Cooks Illustrated. I've made it two or three times and it always comes out perfectly - just the right mix of crispy and browned on the outside and tender on the inside, thanks to their extensive testing.

2. Drain potatoes. Spread potatoes out on a triple layer of paper towels and thoroughly pat dry with additional paper towels. Rinse and wipe out now empty bowl; return potatoes to bowl and toss with remaining 1 tablespoon oil. Arrange potatoes in a single layer on prepared baking sheet; cover tightly with foil and bake 5 minutes. Remove foil and continue to bake until bottoms of potatoes are spotty golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes, rotating baking sheet after 10 minutes. Using metal spatula and tongs, scrape to loosen potatoes from pan, then flip each wedge, keeping potatoes in a single layer. Continue baking until fries are golden and crisp, 5 to 15 minutes longer, rotating pan as needed if fries are browning unevenly.

3. Transfer fries to a second baking sheet lined with paper towels to drain. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

It's obvious that Elvis did not have North Berkeley in mind when he wrote "In the Ghetto." Welcome to my neighborhood, North Berkeley's famous "Gourmet Ghetto." It's long been a mecca for food-lovers. Here are just a few reasons why:Alice Waters' fabledChez Panisserestaurant. Opened in 1971, this place sparked a movement around fresh, locally grown food and is considered by many to be the birthplace of California cuisine. It's a tasty, expensive restaurant with a prix-fixe menu (downstairs, upstairs has a separate menu) that has spawned a lot of good things including the Chez Panisse Foundation and one of its pet projects, the Edible Schoolyard (a wonderful program at a public middle school a few blocks from my house - it really deserves its own post and photos.) The restaurant's cuisine and fame have also served as a launching pad for a host of amazing chefs and local businesses. It seems that if you work there (and don't totally screw up) you can pretty much write your own ticket. Some examples of successful local ticket-writers include Acme Bread, Metropolitan Bread Co., Pizzaiolo restaurant in Temescal, Greens Restaurant in San Fran (owned by Deborah Madison), Zuni Cafe in San Fran, César - a tapas bar which is right next-door to Chez (as those in the know call it), Eccolo restaurant in Berkeley, Bakesale Betty's shop in Temescal, Oliveto restaurant in Rockridge, and many more. If you want more info on this institution, check out Wikipedia's entry.

TheCheeseboard Collective. There are two halves to the Cheeseboard - the cheese part (they also sell delectable breads and baked goods, ice cream, and other fine fare) and the pizza part. Both are worker-owned and operated. The main down-side to the Cheeseboard is the extremely long lines. Also, I feel I have to note that the pizza, while delicious and fairly reasonably priced, never includes tomato sauce which is something I like to have on my pizza every once in a while.

They just renovated the pizza side of the operation and it's quite nice and a good deal larger (more room for tables and for the piano and the two- three jazz musicians who play there each night.) Pizza eaters still spill out onto the grassy median that divides Shattuck Avenue, despite the sign that warns "Keep off Median" which has been defaced to read, "Keep Off Media" (very Berkeley.)

The French Hotel. Although I have never been there, this place is always crowded, no matter what time of day. And sometimes there are even genuine Europeans sitting outside, nursing an espresso or latte. I can't vouch for the rooms but the sidewalk seating is top-notch (and tres Euro) and the coffee must be good.

Guerrilla Cafe is a relative newcomer to the neighborhood that serves kick-ass coffee and tasty breakfast/brunch food. I hear that their pumpkin pancakes are particularly tasty and that their egg dishes are delish (they try to use as much organic food as possible though this hardly makes them unique here in the Bay Area.) They have a cool, Che Guevarra type-vibe with stenciled walls depicting revolutionary leaders like Malcolm X (pictured below.)

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Let me begin by saying that I am not a vegetarian. Save for a few very angsty and idealistic years in highschool, I've been a devoted omnivore (though I refuse to eat oysters - they just look too much like snot to me) my whole life.However, Deborah Madison's cookbook, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks. There are a number of reasons why I love this cookbook:

1. This woman knows her vegetables, grains, fruits, cheeses, nuts, legumes, etc., etc. She is truly a great cook with a huge breadth of knowledge and it shines through on every page.

2. The book is not written for vegetarians, alone. Her recipes are not designed to be used as substitutes for meat (something which I find is often the case in other vegetarian cookbooks.) I think the quote on the book's cover pretty much sums it up, "The 1,400 recipes in this book are those that I like to cook. If you're a committed vegetarian, you can prepare every recipe in this book. If you're a vegan, you can cook most of them. If you don't attach a title to your eating style, you can cook everything in this book and serve it with meat, fish, or fowl. This is Vegetarian cooking for Everyone."

3. Her recipes are creative and they show her love of food. Reading this book always makes me excited about cooking and opens my eyes to new foods and techniques.

4.Like the Joy of Cooking or the recipes in Cooks Illustrated magazine, it includes a lot of useful information about technique, science, ingredients, etc. I find that including this information makes it much more likely that the recipes will turn out well and that it enables me to apply new techniques, skills, or lessons learned from past mistakes from one dish to others.

5. It just offers so much! At 720+ pages and 1,400 recipes, the book provides an amazing variety of delicious foods.

Lately, I've been hearing a lot of talk about the long-maligned coconut oil
- how good it tastes and how good it is for you. First it was a friend who swears by the stuff and then it was my Thai cooking teacher, Kasma, who is a serious devotee and has done a bunch of research to back up her strong opinions.

Kasma painted a tale of large-scale conspiracy to discredit this oil and paint it as unhealthy. Who was behind this vicious smear campaign, you ask? The American soy and corn industries who want the cooking oil market all to themselves...

At first, I was a bit skeptical. But she had so many articles and studies to back up her claims that I finally began to question the evil coconut oil myth... You can read Kasma's summary argument and check out her references on her web site.

What is really the truth? I don't know for absolutely certain but I tend to believe that this is a really good fat. However, I can vouch for coconut oil's pleasant taste, relatively high smoke point, and long shelf-life (particularly if it remains solid) with absolute certainty.

It's a great substitute for cooking and baking if you have any lactose intolerant people in your life. If you want to give it a try, I'd suggest looking for an organic virgin coconut oil.

I recently redeemed myself after a disastrous attempt at making vegetable fried rice a few months back. The second batch of fried rice was delicious - both hot out of the wok and also cold out of a tupperware the next day for lunch.

The failed first batch had a lot of problems but the worst of them was an overwhelming gelatinous quality. It was hard to tell if this was the result of gummy rice or the egg that was coating everything.I studied a few recipes online and realized what I'd done wrong the first time. I'd made two large errors that had doomed the rice from the start.Error #1: I'd used hot rice.Error #2: I'd tried to fry the egg in the wok with the rest of the ingredients.I found out that it is essential to use cold, pre-cooked rice so that the individual grains can be coated in oil and fried successfully. Warm or hot rice gets all stuck together and gluey, making it impossible to separate the grains. And I also learned that most recipes recommend frying the egg in the wok before you've added anything else, then removing it and adding it back in at the end of the stir-frying.

With these two changes, it all went off without a hitch. I ended up cobbling together two or three separate recipes since I could not find one that included all the ingredients I wanted -- rice, eggs, onions, scallions, carrots, and snowpeas.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

My friend Naushon taught me this simple and delicious recipe for roasted carrots. I tried it this spring with the first carrots of the season, fresh from the downtown Berkeley farmer's market. They were small and tender (see photo) so I cooked them mostly whole but it's also delicious with bigger, older carrots - just slice them up.

Ingredients

Carrots

Coconut oil, butter, or olive oil

Coarse sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Honey (optional)

Splash of water

Preheat oven to 450. Clean the carrots and cut off the ends. Cut them into manageable sized pieces, depending on the size of the carrots. Grease a baking dish with either coconut oil, butter or olive oil (I think I actually like the coconut oil best - it lends a subtle sweetness to the end product and is supposedly also really good for you!). Toss the carrots in the dish and add a bit more fat (dot with the butter or coconut oil or throw in a splash of olive oil). Add salt and pepper to taste and drizzle with a bit of honey (you can omit the sweetener if you prefer). Cover with tin foil and bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another 10 minutes or until nice and tender.

I took a luxurious three weeks off of work in September and ended up canning quite a bit. I started out big and ambitious with fresh tomato sauce. I walked to the amazing Monterey Market which is about twelve blocks from my house and bought pounds of organic roma tomatoes, tons of onions and garlic, two bunches of carrots and a head of celery. Ten hours and seven quarts of tomato sauce later, every muscle in my body ached and my fingernails appeared permanently dyed red from peeling the blanched tomatoes (despite much washing.) I thought I was done with canning forever. But just a few days later I was back at it, making a big pot of organic apple sauce.

I'm not sure why I find canning so addictive. Maybe it's that incredibly satisfying popping noise the lids on the jars make when they seal? Maybe it's the grounded feeling I get from doing something so old-fashioned and domestic? Or maybe it is my deep-seated fear of scarcity that makes preserving food so appealing...Happily, apple sauce is not only much quicker and easier to make than tomato sauce, it's also easier to can because it's more appropriate for pint jars, instead of quarts. All you do is peel the apples, core them, chop them into pieces so they'll cook more quickly, dump them in a big pot with some liquid (apple cider, apple juice, or water are all good), add your sweetener of choice (or none, if you prefer unsweetened) and whatever spices you like (I go with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg) and simmer until the apples fall apart. Then you can either blend the sauce to your desired consistency or leave it as is, if you prefer your sauce chunky. I'd like to give a quick plug for immersion blenders, they are an amazingly useful little appliance. No need to pour soups or sauces from pot to blender or cuisinart - the immersion blender (which looks like some sort of weird sex toy the first time you see it) allows you to blend as much or as little as you want right in the pot or bowl. Apparently, they now make these cordless though I've never found having to plug mine in to be particularly inconvenient. The canning is easy as pie -- sterilize the jars and lids in boiling water, heat your applesauce until it's bubbling, then ladle it into the sterilized jars, leaving half an inch of headroom. Drop the sterilized lids onto the filled jars and twist the tops on, then boil for 20 minutes in the canner (making sure that the tops of the jars are well-covered by the water.) Then remove the jars and set them in a draft-free spot to cool overnight. You should hear that magical pop, pop, pop as the jar lids seal after the sauce has cooled enough to contract, sucking the jar top down to make an air-tight seal.Click here for more in-depth instructions.The applesauce was so easy that I figured I'd try my hand at pickling some veggies. I picked up some good-looking blue lake green beans at the Berkeley Bowl (another Berkeley institution) and four pounds of pickling cukes at Monterey Market and set about making dilly beans and dill pickles. I had planned to make the beans at the same time as I canned some dill pickles but after reading about twenty recipes for dill pickles I decided to brine them in salt water overnight. The green beans were not too much trouble - basically you clean and pare them and pack them with pickling spices and dill heads in pint jars, then pour a boiling vinegar-water-spice mixture into the jars, seal and boil for ten minutes. The main downside to this endeavor was the intense smell of vinegar that filled my entire apartment within minutes which I've been unable to get rid of since. So caution to those of you who live in small spaces without great ventilation...The dill pickles were similar (and added another dose of vinegar to my apartment.) I sliced them into quarters ('cause there was no way I was fitting more than two or three into the jars whole) and packed them in quart jars with garlic cloves, dill heads, yellow and black mustard seed and a few grape leaves. The grape leaves are a more natural substitute for the mineral alum which is often added to pickles to make them crunchier, apparently, the grape leaves have the same effect on cukes. Unfortunately, two of the jars expanded more than I'd expected during the final boiling, denting the tops (although they appeared to seal upon cooling.) Since I would feel bad killing my friends, family and neighbors, I've elected to keep those two quarts in the fridge and open them in two weeks (the recipes suggested waiting two weeks before eating to allow time for the "pickling" to reach a good point). I have not tasted them yet but have high hopes. They look good, at least!

Tagine of Lamb with Quince or Safardjaliya (also from the New Book of Middle Eastern Food)

I knew practically nothing about quinces so I did what any lover of cuisine does in the 21st century and googled them. Wikipedia provided a wealth of info about the origins, uses, and yes, even literary associations of this fuzz-covered fruit... Here is a photo of one of the golden beauties from the tree next-door.

As anyone who has ever tried biting into one can tell you, raw quinces are hard and bitter and basically inedible (unless you're trapped on a desert island and have nothing else to eat in which case you might find them delectable.) But cook them long enough and they turn a lovely reddish color, become sweet, and release a uniquely lovely perfume (according to wikipedia, Plutarch reports that a Greek bride would nibble a quince to perfume her kiss before entering the bridal chamber, "in order that the first greeting may not be disagreeable nor unpleasant".) Quince trees are native to Iran, Armenia, Turkey, Albany, Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria where they are known by their Arabic name, "safarjal". Although quinces were introduced in the New World, we have very few here in North America because they could not withstand something called "fireblight disease" which we apparently have quite a bit of. So it appears that the gnarled little tree growing in my neighbors' yard is something of a rarity.All the more reason to bake, roast and poach the hell out of its fruits!More to come later, once I've cooked a few of these things.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Since I moved to Berkeley from DC a year ago, nothing has made me feel more horribly out of place than Café Gratitude.

Cafe Gratitudé is a small, popular Bay Area chain with two restaurants in San Fran, one in Berkeley, and one in San Rafael. According to their website, Café Gratitude is both "a school in transformation" and "an experiment in sacred commerce."

Are you getting the picture yet? It's the ultimate hippie lifestyle eatery. To their credit, they serve high-quality organic food that they try to source from local farmers and most people seem to love it. Unfortunately, I can't speak to the quality of the food as I've never set foot in the place. Why? Because the way in which one is forced to order at Café Gratitude makes me want to run (screaming) back to DC as fast as I can.

Allow me to explain in case you are not familiar with Café Gratitude's shtick. Each dish has a name that expresses a unique (and beautiful) state of being. Here are a few examples from their current menu:

You MUST order by saying "I am eternally blessed" - you cannot say "I'll have the I am eternally blessed" or "an eternally blessed, please" because the wait staff will not place your order. Seriously.

Since I prefer to keep my daily affirmations to myself, the thought of having to say "I am praising" out loud in public makes me want to throw up. So you can probably understand why Café Gratitude has been a painful reminder that I may never fit in here in Berkeley.

But then, out of my angst, a brilliant idea* was born -- Café Attitude - the alternative for all of us East coast transplants who don't want to explore devotional chanting or deepen our yoga practices.**

Café Attitude would serve meat (lots of it), as well as dairy, and wheat, the wait staff would dress in black and be pale as ghosts (NO healthy California glow here), and all talk of yoga and meditation would be banned on the premises.

But, of course, the thing that would have all us angsty East coast types flocking to the place would be the menu. Instead of forcing diners to pretend that they live in a wonderland of bliss, peace, and wonderment, Café Attitude would give people a chance to express themselves honestly. For example, the menu would feature the following fine fare:

"I am eternally pissed off" (a big plate of penne a l'arabiatta)

"I am suicidal" (a Bloody Mary)

"I am exhausted" (a huge mocha latte)

"I am premenstrual" (a thick slice of German chocolate cake)

There are a bunch of other states of being I'd like to include on the menu but I could use some help matching them up with the appropriate cuisine, including the "I am bloated", "I am angsty", "I am bored out of my mind", "I am unmotivated", "I am cranky", "I am litigious", "I am obese", "I am insecure", "I am borderline", and "I am eternally directionless."

Any ideas for which foods would best match these perfectly valid states of being are welcome, as well as any new menu suggestions.

*To give credit where credit is due, Café Attitude was the brainchild of my big brother, a hippie who loves Café Gratitude but who is still able to see the humor in the whole situation.**No offense to those of you who are into this stuff (especially Kara, Daniel, Louis and Julie.) I think it's great, it's just not my thing.

Berkeley is the land of farmers' markets. There are three held in the city each week at different locations. Saturday is the downtown market at Center Street. It's truly a feast for the eyes and a foodie's delight. However, it's not cheap so you may want to use that tried and true gambling addict's method and bring only as much money as you can afford to spend with you to avoid blowing your wad.This sign greets you at the beginning of the block, along with a box of used plastic bags you can grab to help cut down on waste.

Much (if not most) of the produce at the market is certified organic. Below is a picture of the prettiest mesclun mix I've ever seen.

Thankfully, fall means apples on this coast, too. Tons of varieties from the local orchards.

Peppers come in all colors...

Grapes appeared at the market towards the end of the summer. I think the season may be ending soon but they're still delicious.

Dry-farmed organic Early Girl tomatoes.Either the Early Girls keep producing late or they're actually a second summer planting.

The Fatted Calf Charcuterie's charmingly packaged beef jerky. According to one of the guys who works at the stand, the NY Times declared it "the third best jerky in the U.S." At $30 a pop, it'd better be good... They've got a cute web site.

For those who like it hot!

For those who like it caffeinated (I just thought it was a cute sign.)

Friday, September 28, 2007

I am no expert but I have done some reading, made many mistakes, and taken a month of Thai cooking classes with someone who is an expert. Below are a few things I've learned along the way.

1. Stir-frying is a very quick, high-heat cooking method so it's essential to slice and dice the veggies finely as they will only have minutes to cook, at most.

2. Peanut is the best oil to fry with because it has a relatively high flash point (the temperature at which it will begin to burn and smoke) compared with other oils. My brilliant Thai cooking teacher, Kasma, prefers lard over all else, but most people are sort of turned off by that so peanut oil is a good alternative.

3. You must have ALL your ingredients prepared and at the ready when you begin since things get pretty hot and heavy in the kitchen once you start stir-frying and there is no time to be cutting or mixing things.

4. Begin by frying your "aromatics" -- ginger, garlic, chili pepper, etc., in the oil you'll be using to stir-fry for about one minute. This will allow them to infuse the oil with their tastes. I owe this tip (which is probably completely obvious to anyone of Asian descent) to Deborah Madison's wonderful cookbook, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

5. Remember the "order of operations" from math class way back when? In order to ensure that everything gets done at the same time, you have to start the things that will take longer to cook (like carrots) before things which will cook more quickly (like snow peas).

6. Don't leave food sitting in the wok as it may get discolored by the metal fairly quickly.

7. Season your wok after each use. It's smoky and kind of a pain but absolutely essential.

If you're looking for inspiration, check out my friend, Grace Young's lovely book, The Breath of a Wok. It's full of delicious recipes and wok-related lore. In fact, one of my favorite dishes (the garlic spinach below) is from this book.

N.B. Unless you are lucky enough to have a really good, high-powered stove (I'm lucky if mine even lights), you probably won't be getting the most out of your wok because they perform best over really high heat and your typical MagicChef burner simply cannot muster a super-hot flame. This does not mean you can't stir-fry with success but it does mean you may need to cook in smaller batches since your wok won't get as hot as it would over a really big flame.You might like:

I've only recently started eating beets - for years I was too turned off by their "earthy" (this is a polite way of saying that they taste like dirt) flavor to stomach them. Then I discovered golden beets - which have a lighter, sweeter taste - and everything changed.The recipe below is a mish-mash of recipes I found online. I've made it a few times and it is delicious and EASY. You can use any kind of beets - golden, purple, chiogga, whatever floats your boat. They're all beautiful and will be equally tasty (though steer clear of the purple ones if you don't like a strong "earthy" flavor.)

Quick Pickled Beets Serves Four; Prep Time 40 minutes

Ingredients

1 bunch of beets (4 or 5 full-sized beets or 8-10 baby beets)

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1 Tbsp sugar

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions1. Remove the greens and wash the beets (don't bother getting too obsessive about cleaning them as you will be peeling the skins off later in the process.)

2. Steam or boil the beets for 30 minutes or until you can easily slip a fork into them.

3. Drain the beets and rinse in cold water. Use your fingers to slip the skins off - this should be very easy (and oddly satisfying) to do. Throw the peels away and slice the beets into whatever bowl you plan to serve them in. The size of the slices is really up to you - whatever you think you'll enjoy eating is fine.

4. Combine the vinegar, sugar, oil and mustard and whisk with a fork. Add salt and pepper to taste.

5. Pour the vinaigrette over the beets and turn to coat. Taste and adjust salt and pepper to taste. Marinate for at least half an hour to allow them to "pickle." You can also refrigerate them overnight to let the flavor soak in more.

This excellent recipe hails from Cooks Illustrated. I've made it two or three times and it always comes out perfectly - just the right mix of crispy and browned on the outside and tender on the inside, thanks to their extensive testing.

2. Drain potatoes. Spread potatoes out on a triple layer of paper towels and thoroughly pat dry with additional paper towels. Rinse and wipe out now empty bowl; return potatoes to bowl and toss with remaining 1 tablespoon oil. Arrange potatoes in a single layer on prepared baking sheet; cover tightly with foil and bake 5 minutes. Remove foil and continue to bake until bottoms of potatoes are spotty golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes, rotating baking sheet after 10 minutes. Using metal spatula and tongs, scrape to loosen potatoes from pan, then flip each wedge, keeping potatoes in a single layer. Continue baking until fries are golden and crisp, 5 to 15 minutes longer, rotating pan as needed if fries are browning unevenly.

3. Transfer fries to a second baking sheet lined with paper towels to drain. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

It's obvious that Elvis did not have North Berkeley in mind when he wrote "In the Ghetto." Welcome to my neighborhood, North Berkeley's famous "Gourmet Ghetto." It's long been a mecca for food-lovers. Here are just a few reasons why:Alice Waters' fabledChez Panisserestaurant. Opened in 1971, this place sparked a movement around fresh, locally grown food and is considered by many to be the birthplace of California cuisine. It's a tasty, expensive restaurant with a prix-fixe menu (downstairs, upstairs has a separate menu) that has spawned a lot of good things including the Chez Panisse Foundation and one of its pet projects, the Edible Schoolyard (a wonderful program at a public middle school a few blocks from my house - it really deserves its own post and photos.) The restaurant's cuisine and fame have also served as a launching pad for a host of amazing chefs and local businesses. It seems that if you work there (and don't totally screw up) you can pretty much write your own ticket. Some examples of successful local ticket-writers include Acme Bread, Metropolitan Bread Co., Pizzaiolo restaurant in Temescal, Greens Restaurant in San Fran (owned by Deborah Madison), Zuni Cafe in San Fran, César - a tapas bar which is right next-door to Chez (as those in the know call it), Eccolo restaurant in Berkeley, Bakesale Betty's shop in Temescal, Oliveto restaurant in Rockridge, and many more. If you want more info on this institution, check out Wikipedia's entry.

TheCheeseboard Collective. There are two halves to the Cheeseboard - the cheese part (they also sell delectable breads and baked goods, ice cream, and other fine fare) and the pizza part. Both are worker-owned and operated. The main down-side to the Cheeseboard is the extremely long lines. Also, I feel I have to note that the pizza, while delicious and fairly reasonably priced, never includes tomato sauce which is something I like to have on my pizza every once in a while.

They just renovated the pizza side of the operation and it's quite nice and a good deal larger (more room for tables and for the piano and the two- three jazz musicians who play there each night.) Pizza eaters still spill out onto the grassy median that divides Shattuck Avenue, despite the sign that warns "Keep off Median" which has been defaced to read, "Keep Off Media" (very Berkeley.)

The French Hotel. Although I have never been there, this place is always crowded, no matter what time of day. And sometimes there are even genuine Europeans sitting outside, nursing an espresso or latte. I can't vouch for the rooms but the sidewalk seating is top-notch (and tres Euro) and the coffee must be good.

Guerrilla Cafe is a relative newcomer to the neighborhood that serves kick-ass coffee and tasty breakfast/brunch food. I hear that their pumpkin pancakes are particularly tasty and that their egg dishes are delish (they try to use as much organic food as possible though this hardly makes them unique here in the Bay Area.) They have a cool, Che Guevarra type-vibe with stenciled walls depicting revolutionary leaders like Malcolm X (pictured below.)

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Let me begin by saying that I am not a vegetarian. Save for a few very angsty and idealistic years in highschool, I've been a devoted omnivore (though I refuse to eat oysters - they just look too much like snot to me) my whole life.However, Deborah Madison's cookbook, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks. There are a number of reasons why I love this cookbook:

1. This woman knows her vegetables, grains, fruits, cheeses, nuts, legumes, etc., etc. She is truly a great cook with a huge breadth of knowledge and it shines through on every page.

2. The book is not written for vegetarians, alone. Her recipes are not designed to be used as substitutes for meat (something which I find is often the case in other vegetarian cookbooks.) I think the quote on the book's cover pretty much sums it up, "The 1,400 recipes in this book are those that I like to cook. If you're a committed vegetarian, you can prepare every recipe in this book. If you're a vegan, you can cook most of them. If you don't attach a title to your eating style, you can cook everything in this book and serve it with meat, fish, or fowl. This is Vegetarian cooking for Everyone."

3. Her recipes are creative and they show her love of food. Reading this book always makes me excited about cooking and opens my eyes to new foods and techniques.

4.Like the Joy of Cooking or the recipes in Cooks Illustrated magazine, it includes a lot of useful information about technique, science, ingredients, etc. I find that including this information makes it much more likely that the recipes will turn out well and that it enables me to apply new techniques, skills, or lessons learned from past mistakes from one dish to others.

5. It just offers so much! At 720+ pages and 1,400 recipes, the book provides an amazing variety of delicious foods.

Lately, I've been hearing a lot of talk about the long-maligned coconut oil
- how good it tastes and how good it is for you. First it was a friend who swears by the stuff and then it was my Thai cooking teacher, Kasma, who is a serious devotee and has done a bunch of research to back up her strong opinions.

Kasma painted a tale of large-scale conspiracy to discredit this oil and paint it as unhealthy. Who was behind this vicious smear campaign, you ask? The American soy and corn industries who want the cooking oil market all to themselves...

At first, I was a bit skeptical. But she had so many articles and studies to back up her claims that I finally began to question the evil coconut oil myth... You can read Kasma's summary argument and check out her references on her web site.

What is really the truth? I don't know for absolutely certain but I tend to believe that this is a really good fat. However, I can vouch for coconut oil's pleasant taste, relatively high smoke point, and long shelf-life (particularly if it remains solid) with absolute certainty.

It's a great substitute for cooking and baking if you have any lactose intolerant people in your life. If you want to give it a try, I'd suggest looking for an organic virgin coconut oil.

I recently redeemed myself after a disastrous attempt at making vegetable fried rice a few months back. The second batch of fried rice was delicious - both hot out of the wok and also cold out of a tupperware the next day for lunch.

The failed first batch had a lot of problems but the worst of them was an overwhelming gelatinous quality. It was hard to tell if this was the result of gummy rice or the egg that was coating everything.I studied a few recipes online and realized what I'd done wrong the first time. I'd made two large errors that had doomed the rice from the start.Error #1: I'd used hot rice.Error #2: I'd tried to fry the egg in the wok with the rest of the ingredients.I found out that it is essential to use cold, pre-cooked rice so that the individual grains can be coated in oil and fried successfully. Warm or hot rice gets all stuck together and gluey, making it impossible to separate the grains. And I also learned that most recipes recommend frying the egg in the wok before you've added anything else, then removing it and adding it back in at the end of the stir-frying.

With these two changes, it all went off without a hitch. I ended up cobbling together two or three separate recipes since I could not find one that included all the ingredients I wanted -- rice, eggs, onions, scallions, carrots, and snowpeas.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

My friend Naushon taught me this simple and delicious recipe for roasted carrots. I tried it this spring with the first carrots of the season, fresh from the downtown Berkeley farmer's market. They were small and tender (see photo) so I cooked them mostly whole but it's also delicious with bigger, older carrots - just slice them up.

Ingredients

Carrots

Coconut oil, butter, or olive oil

Coarse sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Honey (optional)

Splash of water

Preheat oven to 450. Clean the carrots and cut off the ends. Cut them into manageable sized pieces, depending on the size of the carrots. Grease a baking dish with either coconut oil, butter or olive oil (I think I actually like the coconut oil best - it lends a subtle sweetness to the end product and is supposedly also really good for you!). Toss the carrots in the dish and add a bit more fat (dot with the butter or coconut oil or throw in a splash of olive oil). Add salt and pepper to taste and drizzle with a bit of honey (you can omit the sweetener if you prefer). Cover with tin foil and bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another 10 minutes or until nice and tender.

I took a luxurious three weeks off of work in September and ended up canning quite a bit. I started out big and ambitious with fresh tomato sauce. I walked to the amazing Monterey Market which is about twelve blocks from my house and bought pounds of organic roma tomatoes, tons of onions and garlic, two bunches of carrots and a head of celery. Ten hours and seven quarts of tomato sauce later, every muscle in my body ached and my fingernails appeared permanently dyed red from peeling the blanched tomatoes (despite much washing.) I thought I was done with canning forever. But just a few days later I was back at it, making a big pot of organic apple sauce.

I'm not sure why I find canning so addictive. Maybe it's that incredibly satisfying popping noise the lids on the jars make when they seal? Maybe it's the grounded feeling I get from doing something so old-fashioned and domestic? Or maybe it is my deep-seated fear of scarcity that makes preserving food so appealing...Happily, apple sauce is not only much quicker and easier to make than tomato sauce, it's also easier to can because it's more appropriate for pint jars, instead of quarts. All you do is peel the apples, core them, chop them into pieces so they'll cook more quickly, dump them in a big pot with some liquid (apple cider, apple juice, or water are all good), add your sweetener of choice (or none, if you prefer unsweetened) and whatever spices you like (I go with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg) and simmer until the apples fall apart. Then you can either blend the sauce to your desired consistency or leave it as is, if you prefer your sauce chunky. I'd like to give a quick plug for immersion blenders, they are an amazingly useful little appliance. No need to pour soups or sauces from pot to blender or cuisinart - the immersion blender (which looks like some sort of weird sex toy the first time you see it) allows you to blend as much or as little as you want right in the pot or bowl. Apparently, they now make these cordless though I've never found having to plug mine in to be particularly inconvenient. The canning is easy as pie -- sterilize the jars and lids in boiling water, heat your applesauce until it's bubbling, then ladle it into the sterilized jars, leaving half an inch of headroom. Drop the sterilized lids onto the filled jars and twist the tops on, then boil for 20 minutes in the canner (making sure that the tops of the jars are well-covered by the water.) Then remove the jars and set them in a draft-free spot to cool overnight. You should hear that magical pop, pop, pop as the jar lids seal after the sauce has cooled enough to contract, sucking the jar top down to make an air-tight seal.Click here for more in-depth instructions.The applesauce was so easy that I figured I'd try my hand at pickling some veggies. I picked up some good-looking blue lake green beans at the Berkeley Bowl (another Berkeley institution) and four pounds of pickling cukes at Monterey Market and set about making dilly beans and dill pickles. I had planned to make the beans at the same time as I canned some dill pickles but after reading about twenty recipes for dill pickles I decided to brine them in salt water overnight. The green beans were not too much trouble - basically you clean and pare them and pack them with pickling spices and dill heads in pint jars, then pour a boiling vinegar-water-spice mixture into the jars, seal and boil for ten minutes. The main downside to this endeavor was the intense smell of vinegar that filled my entire apartment within minutes which I've been unable to get rid of since. So caution to those of you who live in small spaces without great ventilation...The dill pickles were similar (and added another dose of vinegar to my apartment.) I sliced them into quarters ('cause there was no way I was fitting more than two or three into the jars whole) and packed them in quart jars with garlic cloves, dill heads, yellow and black mustard seed and a few grape leaves. The grape leaves are a more natural substitute for the mineral alum which is often added to pickles to make them crunchier, apparently, the grape leaves have the same effect on cukes. Unfortunately, two of the jars expanded more than I'd expected during the final boiling, denting the tops (although they appeared to seal upon cooling.) Since I would feel bad killing my friends, family and neighbors, I've elected to keep those two quarts in the fridge and open them in two weeks (the recipes suggested waiting two weeks before eating to allow time for the "pickling" to reach a good point). I have not tasted them yet but have high hopes. They look good, at least!

Tagine of Lamb with Quince or Safardjaliya (also from the New Book of Middle Eastern Food)

I knew practically nothing about quinces so I did what any lover of cuisine does in the 21st century and googled them. Wikipedia provided a wealth of info about the origins, uses, and yes, even literary associations of this fuzz-covered fruit... Here is a photo of one of the golden beauties from the tree next-door.

As anyone who has ever tried biting into one can tell you, raw quinces are hard and bitter and basically inedible (unless you're trapped on a desert island and have nothing else to eat in which case you might find them delectable.) But cook them long enough and they turn a lovely reddish color, become sweet, and release a uniquely lovely perfume (according to wikipedia, Plutarch reports that a Greek bride would nibble a quince to perfume her kiss before entering the bridal chamber, "in order that the first greeting may not be disagreeable nor unpleasant".) Quince trees are native to Iran, Armenia, Turkey, Albany, Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria where they are known by their Arabic name, "safarjal". Although quinces were introduced in the New World, we have very few here in North America because they could not withstand something called "fireblight disease" which we apparently have quite a bit of. So it appears that the gnarled little tree growing in my neighbors' yard is something of a rarity.All the more reason to bake, roast and poach the hell out of its fruits!More to come later, once I've cooked a few of these things.